Old Ale Appreciation Thread (2024)

"The beer was brewed using a combination of traditional ale malt, wheat for mouth feel, roasted malts and brewers invert sugar, which provides the beer with a deeper richness in flavour and notes of stone fruit. The new batch of Prize Old Ale was allowed to ferment with the original Gales yeast which was transferred in liquid form from the Fullers brewery who still manage the original yeast strain for beers like HSB. After fermentation, the beer was blended at a 50/50 rate into the original batch of Prize Old Ale and allowed to mature for 3-4 months until it was packaged. The original batch of Prize Old Ale was carefully tankered from the Griffin Brewery to Meantime where it will be housed going forward." Sven Hartmann, Lead Brewer Dark Star

This misses some of the sour/acidic nature I would expect of a true Old Ale but is nevertheless pretty close to a traditional English version of the style.

 

I love what a delicious mess beer styles can be. As @zid said plenty of old ales could easily be labeled barleywine and nobody would blink. That certainly isn't true for the beer @Braunmeister_1943 opened the thread with. If anyone ever started an oatmeal or milk stout thread a lot of the beers posted there would fit definitely on the impy stout thread as well. I love it when classifications aren't neat and tidy chaos is more fun

 

As to the Old Ale vs. Barley Wine debate, below is an extract from the BJCP style guidelines for Old Ale (with emphasis in bold by me):

“Overall Impression: A stronger-than-average English ale, though usually not as strong or rich as an English Barley Wine, but usually malty. Warming. Shows positive maturation effects of a well-kept, aged beer.”

I suppose we could all draw our own line but it seems to me that when a Strong British Ale crosses 10% ABV it is appropriate to brand that beer as being a Barley Wine.

Cheers!

 

I discussed Old Peculiar a week ago in the NBW thread:

I’m back in the saddle again!

But firstly:



Today’s beer is Theakston Old Peculier which apparently has been absent as a US import for quite some time. There is an ongoing thread discussing the return of Old Peculier to the American beer market:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...returns-to-the-us-after-a-10-year-gap.674975/

I never had this beer when it was imported 10 years ago so this is a new drinking experience for me.

How this beer is detailed on BA:

“Old Peculier is possibly one of the country’s most well-known and loved ales. This unique, beautiful brew is often imitated but never matched and is sold literally all over the world. With countless awards to its credit, it is something of which every Briton can be very proud and is the epitome of the greatest of British brewing tradition.

In the early years of the modern brewing era, about two hundred years ago, many brewers produced a dark, strong ‘stock’ beer in the winter months, to provide a base amount of fermented beer to add to beers brewed in the rather more volatile months of the summer.

Old Peculier probably owes its origins to this. The name pays tribute to the unique ecclesiastical status of Masham as a ‘Court of the Peculier’ and is also reference to the strong characteristic of the beer! For many years it was affectionately referred to as Yorkshire’s ‘Lunatic’s Broth’.”

On the bottom of the can they proclaim: “The Original Craft Brewer”. Well, that is some ‘interesting’ marketing there!

Let’s see what sort of beer the “original craft brewer” makes.

Served in my Nonic Imperial Pint glass:

Appearance:

Dark brown with a reddish hue and a thin tan head.

Aroma:

A pleasing combination of toffee and dried dark fruit (e.g., fig, etc.).

Taste:

The flavor follows the nose with flavors of toffee and dried darks fruits but there is more here: subtle roastiness and as the beer warms/opens up there is even a very tiny hint of chocolate.

Mouthfeel:

This beer is medium bodied with a soft-ish mouthfeel followed by an off-dry finish.

Overall:

This beer is very good. I think it is a tasty balanced beer!

Cheers!

P.S. I would be willing to bet BIG BUCKS that this beer is absolutely sublime on cask.

To paraphrase Donkey: “Do you have a tissue or something? I'm making a mess. Just the thought of Old Peculier on cask makes me start slobbering.”

 

Because Larry Bell saw the legal complications of labeling the beer a barley wine when the beer was first conceived, so they didn't call it a barley wine at the time.

You would certainly be drawing your own line there, because that differentiation doesn't hold up in the brewing world.

Have you had earlier versions of that beer in the past? Did you ever drink it before Fuller's purchased Gales?

 

Have you had earlier versions of that beer in the past? Did you ever drink it before Fuller's purchased Gales?[/QUOTE]

I've tried The Marble Arch Brewery versions. This brew had content from Gales Prize Old A They were barrel aged and probably did not reflect well on the original Gales brew which I sadly have never tried.
To me the key feature of an Old Ale is the maturation of at least some part of the final product. I am curious to know how much of the original Gales beer that Asahi have left. The product description only mentions using the yeast.
A good example of an English Old Ale is Greene King's Olde Suffolk English Ale.

 

Yes, as I stated in my post: "I suppose we could all draw our own line but it seems to me...".

Cheers!

 

For anyone interested, here is Larry's post on the same https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...-ale-or-barleywine.542262/page-2#post-5695879

 

I had Old Peculier and Gales Prize Old Ale many years ago. The Gales had a lot of bottle variation, as they had corks for closures, some were flat, some off, some w ee wonderful. Old Peculier was often in a dusty bottle and a stale mess.

Fall of 2022 I got a tour of Theakstons and had OP at the source. A wonderfull ale. Not sour, but good malt flavor and a hint of some invert sugar (which the guide mentioned).

OP has been said to be a lower gravity Burton Ale, a style that has almost disappeared.

 

Whenever I see classics like Old Ales, Wheatwines, Strong Ales, Barleywines, Wee Heavy’s, Eisbocks, Quads etc in stores or on tap, I’m probably ordering them. Imperial Stouts with a bunch of Adjunct additions…most likely not.

 

Beer styles do not fit together like pieces of a cohesive puzzle... where there's a line that demarcates one exclusive category from another.

Furthermore, the range of character within the "old ale" category is huge - as the grouping of Harvey's Old Ale, Gale's Prize Old Ale and Kuhnhenn Bourbon Barrel Aged 4D Olde Ale in the same style category attests to. Likewise, barley wine isn't even much of a style despite people really wanting to believe the opposite. It's basically just a cute marketing term for strong ale... almost any type of strong ale... and in this case, "strong" isn't even specific. We're talking a range of 5%-20% ABV. You can thank the World Wars for the lower end of that range... and "craft brewing" for the higher end.

Ever wonder why people debate the differences between an old ale and a barley wine... but nobody debates the differences between a stock ale and a barley wine, or a stock ale and an old ale, or a Burton ale and a barley wine? They don't because things like BeerAdvocate and the BJCP include old ale and barley wine as categories, but they don't include stock ale or Burton ale... and because brewers don't tend to use the terms today. It's partially a product of tunnel vision. It has more to do with chance than logic. It's very telling that most folks (including the brewer) call North Coast Old Stock Ale an "old ale" instead of a stock ale... and wonder if it's "actually" a barley wine.

 

My introduction to this style was Great Divide's Hibernation ale and I wish I could find a way to brew it at home. This is one of my all time favorite beers to have a cold winter night and as a nightcap. It's so smooth, roasty, delectable. I seek it out each year.

 

I miss having that beer in my area.

 

As I understand it the remaining Gale's beer is now part of a solera type system. They take some out and replace it with fresh beer. So there is always about the same amount left.

 

Kerfuffle started!

 

I have access to 20-year old Gale’s still for sale. That’s the oldest I’ve seen on a shelf.

 

This thread makes me realize how much I miss Hair of the Dog, particularly Adam, which is my all-time favorite Old Ale.

 

BA has always had Adam classified as an old ale, but I assume there's no real logic to that choice. The brewer calls it an "old world ale"... so that might be the cause for the choice... even though that means something totally different than "old ale." Adam was supposed to be a recreation of a German Adambier (and they called it Adam, dropping the "bier" from the name to appease the TTB supposedly). The thing is, I have no idea how Adam is supposed to actually resemble an Adambier. It seems to be designed around no genuine information on that beer type. The brewer also calls it a "dark strong ale" and that seems to be the best tag for it really.

 

Southern Tier "Old Man Winter" - Winter Ale

This beer used to be just called "Old Man" (yeah, a strange name) and it used to be classified on BA as an old ale. I assume it was classified as such because of "old" in the name - it seems like people do that as a convention unless it's labeled a barley wine. Now it's classified here as a winter warmer... which feels more fitting even though that's a total non-style. I think the brewer just called it a winter ale over the years. Thought I'd post here regardless.

Southern Tier has an annoyingly vague way of listing ingredients. They claim: "two varieties of hops and four varieties of malts." Gee, thanks for that info. In the past it looked like they claimed three types of hops and two types of malts. Oooh, quite the evolution.

I haven't had this beer in years, but I used to like it quite a bit. I found this bottle to be fruity and with a very hop bitter finish... but without much malt character for support.

 

I hate to double post, but this thread and the Old Peculier release thread both felt right for this.

I found a store selling both formats. 4 packs of cans were $10.99, singles of cans were $2.79 (basically no price increase), and single bottles were $3.49. The bottles are 16.9oz, but the cans are 14.9oz. The cans are shorter than a typical US 16oz can.

At this particular store, the cost per oz between the formats was very similar with the bottles being only slightly more expensive per oz. This was quite different from some talk I heard from other stores that the bottled beer was twice the price.

I ended up comparing the two liquids. First off, the best by date of the bottle was 31/07/24 and the best by date of the can was 31/10/24. (Note the day/month format.) If they are using the same best by timeframe between formats, then my can was fresher. In addition, I have no idea if these are bottled at a different facility than were they are canned (which might be the case and would add another considerable variable to the mix).

As is usual for me (and the temperatures I drink my beer at), I found that the beer in the can lost too much carbonation when poured. The bottled beer was certainly more lively with carbonation in suspension. The bottled beer was also more expressive - with a little more acidity and fruitiness - but the carbonation was the biggest difference. I have no idea if the slight flavor difference was mainly a product of carbonation differences, batch differences, age differences, or whatever. The bottled beer reminded me more of Old Peculier from cask in the UK, but this could be a trick of the mind.

In the end, I would prefer to buy the bottles over the cans... as long as that slight price difference remains slight.